Many companies, which sell or distribute product find it advantageous to reliably account for successful order fulfillment and product returns. More specifically, for many types of products, it is desirable to maintain an accurate inventory of product, both at the product destination location and the product source. It is further desirable to periodically reconcile the physical inventories of product against the product shipping records to detect product diversion, loss, or theft.
While the method and system of the present invention are applicable to virtually any product sales or distribution network, the following disclosure will use, as an example, a pharmaceutical sample distribution network. Distribution of pharmaceutical samples is a regulated activity, governed under the Prescription Drug Marketing Act (“PDMA”). The PDMA requires drug manufacturers and marketing organizations to periodically account for products manufactured and distributed, for example, as samples to physicians. By requiring this accounting, the PDMA seeks to reduce the quantity of prescription drugs diverted to the black market. Accordingly, it is required that each product governed by the PDMA be tracked from its source to its destination. Periodically, organizations falling under the purview of the PDMA must provide an accurate accounting of the location and/or final disposition of the products in their system. Final disposition may include delivery to a physician, or destruction of the product because the product was not used before its expiration date.
Presently, pharmaceutical companies use multiple systems for product distribution, return, and tracking. The process of product reconciliation is largely manual, requiring the pharmaceutical company to access information in its ordering system for drug representatives, its shipping and tracking systems, and its return system. This lengthy and tedious process for determining the location and disposition of hundreds of thousands of products makes frequent, system-wide reconciliation difficult.